


Water Up To My Knees

by Kingdom_of_Roses



Series: Earth - 199942 [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5&1 format, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Bruce Banner, Coping with Depression, Coping with anxiety, Coping with paranoia, Don't copy to another site, Gen, References to worldbuilding, Things I wish I'd been told as a kid, stress management
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-09 02:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17398565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kingdom_of_Roses/pseuds/Kingdom_of_Roses
Summary: There are some things Lila makes sure stick around





	Water Up To My Knees

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this and I think I've finally reached a point in the main series that this will make some sense on a world-building level.
> 
> More and more studies are showing that mindfulness and meditation are the keys to a healthy, long-lived brain. It certainly helps with my insomnia.

**1.**

At some point, Bruce had stopped thinking of it as a room in Tony’s tower and started thinking of it as his own lab. Thinking it made it so. The lab was Bruce’s space, his space kept safe from intrusion. The tower locked out other influences, inside it was just the Avengers. Layers of safety and security wrapped around the tower, deep protections that let Bruce add touches of his own. 

Bruce was safe. Bruce was secure.

Then he wasn’t.

\---

“Pepper,” Tony jostled Pepper’s elbow as they took a cab to the convention center. “Pepper, I need to go back.”

“No, you promised me three days,” Pepper said firmly, not looking up from her smartphone.

“Pepper, my lab-”

“Bruce can handle it.”

“The tower-”

“Maggie can handle it.”

Tony slumped back in defeat.

\---

Bruce reflexively grounded the power that tried to surge through the tower. He didn’t hurry to the elevator, he calmly descended. Breathing deeply, he counted the buttons in the elevator one at a time, taking a moment to really appreciate the yellowy gold color of the light coming from each. As he focused on the moment, the knot of fear in Bruce’s gut loosened and the anger it shunted out subsided. It never went away but it did retreat.

He crossed into the personal space to the kitchen where Maggie was wrapping an ice pack in a hand towel. She handed it to Cassie who was scowling and sullenly kicking at her stool’s leg, a bruise forming along her jaw. 

Maggie pointed down the hall, her expression tight with fear and anger of her own. “I sent her to her room.”

Bruce nodded, and breathed to loosen that knot of fear again. There wasn’t much Lila could do to him except be an adorable little girl who cried. But there were any number of ways Bruce could muck this up and scar Lila for life. Hulking out topped that list so he did his grounding exercises as he walked to the room they’d assigned to Lila Barton. He occupied his mind with the feeling of his breathing, of his muscles pushing and pulling, the sensation of the cloth under his fingertips, and all the other little details of the moment.

In a way it was a relief. Lila had spent her first week being mousy and well-behaved. Bruce remembered that phase himself. It never lasted.

When he rapped his knuckles lightly on the door, a teary child’s voice called, “Go away!”

“Lila,” Bruce said quietly.

“Leave me alone!”

“I’m not here to punish you. I just want to talk.” Bruce waited uncertainly through the frustrated noise. He tried to remember her age. Eight, he thought. Maybe nine. Anything between six and twelve kind of looked the same to him. Kids that age had short attention spans. Or so he’d heard from the parents in the group. But he also remembered how much being angry hurt when he’d been that old, the way it left no room for anything else until he was wrung out and lost that flame. Then everything just hurt.

Lila blew her nose after a long pause and opened the door, red-eyed. “You can come in,” she said with fragile dignity. She took the chair and he took the bed, careful to give her space.

Bruce asked Lila what his aunt had asked him after his first tantrum after he went to live with her. “What would your mom do?”

“Ground me. Tell me it wasn’t nice to hit Cassie.” Lila stared stubbornly at her hands.

“Do you think it was nice?” Bruce asked gently.

“No.”

“Why did you do it?”

“She ate the last strawberry poptart. Those are my favorite! She just eats them!” Lila clenched her little fists tight again. “Maggie said they forgot and Cassie has practice later and I-” Lila hiccuped blearily, tears leaking down her face again. “All that’s left is blueberry.” Sobs racked her. “I want to go home.”

“Lila,” Bruce said, sitting up straight. “Look at me.” He waited for her eyes to find his. It was an uncomfortable sensation but he stuck it out until he saw her eyes get a bit less squinty. “Breathe in.”

She tried to follow his example, a sob hitching her breath.

“And out.” He demonstrated. “And in. And out. Count in four, hold four, out four.”

She frowned at him.

“It helps me. What did your dad tell you about me and anger?”

“Why?”

“Why does it help?” Bruce waited until she had nodded. “It took me a long time to learn this, longer than you’ve been alive. But when you’re mad like now, why are you mad?”

“Because Cassie ate the last poptart,” Lila said like he was stupid.

“But why does that make you angry?”

“Because I wanted it!” She held her glare for longer than he thought she would. “Because….”

“Because you felt forgotten?” Bruce suggested. “Because you want your mom?”

Lila looked thoughtful.

“Because Cassie gets to have her mom and your brothers get to have theirs but you-” Bruce didn’t add that she was stuck with him and Tony. That wouldn’t help.

She nodded slowly. “It’s not fair.”

“When I get mad, I do my best to remember I’m not mad because of other people. I’m mad because of me. I’m mad because of what I tell myself.” Bruce leaned forward and when she didn’t flinch he folded his hands in front of himself. “See, we tell ourselves stories. About situations and people and why they do things. Especially when they hurt us.”

Lila took a moment to turn that over in her mind before nodding.

“Like this one time I went to the movie theatre and I was waiting in line for my popcorn. I was up next when a guy cut in front of me and he ordered the last of the popcorn.” He nodded to Lila’s skeptical frown. “Yeah. I was so mad. My movie was in only a few minutes. There wasn’t time for me to wait for the new batch. I could still smell it. But, I wanted to see the movie more than I wanted the popcorn. So I went in and I thought about it. And why be mad? Because I didn’t get popcorn? Was that worth fuming through the whole movie? Then I miss out on popcorn and I don’t even enjoy the movie either. Because that guy was rude to me? I don’t know why he did it. Anything I tell myself about why he did it is a story so why not make it a good one? Maybe he got there late and was there with someone and the popcorn was for them. Maybe he was in such a rush that he didn’t see me.”

“But you don’t know that’s true,” Lila protested. “You’re just making stuff up.”

“I don’t know that he meant to cut in front of me to take the last of the popcorn either. Why is that the true story? Because it’s bad?” Bruce shook his head. “Most of the time, when people do stuff it’s about them. That guy probably didn’t even think about me. I like it better when he’s doing it for someone else so that’s the story I tell myself. Thinking he did it to get at me makes me mad. That’s me making me mad. I choose not to.”

“Ms. Holman says only we could make ourselves mad.” Lila said, referring to her new elementary school teacher. “She said it because we got mad at her for giving us homework over the weekend.”

“Well, yeah. Emotions aren’t logic. People do things that are upsetting but you choose how you deal with those feelings. If you throw things or yell or turn into a big, green rage monster, that’s a choice you’re making.” Bruce shrugged. “Sometimes hitting people is the right answer. Most of the time, it really isn’t.”

“Why aren’t you mad at me?”

Because she was a little kid. She might have tried to wish Cassie away but she was a child. They were both children. Because he remembered when everything in his life had suddenly been new and awful. “Because I would rather help you learn not to hit people than yell at you.”

“You’re telling yourself a story about me.”

“Yeah. I’m telling myself the story that you’re a good kid who got mad and lost control. Control can be learned. I’m proof of that.” 

“What if I can’t?”

Bruce shrugged. “Then you live here for the rest of your life. Is that so bad?”

“Will I see my mom again?”

“She’s planning to bring your brothers over for the holidays. No one wants you to be alone. We want to help. But we can’t make you let us.”

**2.**

Cooking was something Tony enjoyed. It was practical chemistry. The application of elements with different qualities and the right uses of timing and heat to handcraft a product that could be objectively measured as right or wrong. It was also something he did to keep his busy while his mind tried to come up with ways to deal with difficult topics.

Bruce had suggested that maybe some of Tony’s conversations with Cassie and Lila were awkward because Tony viewed the topic as difficult and not because of anything Cassie or Lila did. He might have a point so Tony was doing what he could to self-soothe before having a conversation he expected to go badly. Making a deliberate choice to do an activity and focus on the minute steps while he waited for an opportunity to have what might be a dangerously emotional discussion worked well enough to keep his hands steady.

“You kept me up last night. Something big happening today?” Tony flipped a piece of french toast over as Lila sat at the breakfast bar.

“I have to give a presentation today. It’s about the circulatory system.” Lila plunked her elbows on the counter in a way that would have had Tony’s mother scolding.

“Elbows,” he reminded her. “Have you practiced?” He put the bottle of syrup by her, listening for the sizzle of the toast being done.

“Yeah.” She spun the bottle gently.

“How much?”

“Some.”

“Three times. You wished three times. What did you wish for?” He scooped the french toast onto a plate and brought it over to Lila.

“That I wouldn’t have to do it.”

“Not to get a good grade or to do really well or to remember everything?” Tony asked, sitting with a stool between them.

“No.” Lila frowned and poked at the french toast with her fork.

“Hm.” Tony tapped his fingers on the counter. “That would solve this time but what about the next presentation?”

She flinched and stopped the motion of her fork.

“Okay, here’s a trick I learned.” Tony changed tactics.

“Picture everyone naked. I know, I’ve heard.” Lila rolled her eyes and hunched her shoulders.

“I know a better one.” Tony grinned and waited for her to look at him. “What’s the worst thing that could happen? Come on, you give your presentation and- What?”

“I look stupid. I mess it up.”

“Okay, a good start. But is that really the worst thing? You mess up your presentation and you look stupid and then-” He gestured for her to fill in the blank.

“I- Ms. Turper flunks me.” Lila frowned.

“Better. And then?”

“I’m so bad they kick me out of school.”

Tony made another gesture for continuation.

“I never see my friends again!” Lila said more loudly. “I never get to go to college! I never have my own life! I’m stuck here forever until you and Bruce die and then I get burned as a witch! Or no! I wish for the end of the world because I don’t know how to do anything!”

Tony applauded softly. “Worst case: you do so bad that the world ends. What’s the best case?”

“Best? Best case? I- I do it perfectly.” Lila barely waited for Tony to tell her to go on. “I do so well that the teacher gives me an A for the year! I win awards! People everywhere tell me how good it was.”

“Worst case: everyone hates you. Best case: everyone loves you.” Tony nodded sharply. “What’s most likely to happen?”

Lila paused for only a moment. “I flub some words. I get a C.”

“Only a C? Okay.” Tony nodded. “Is a C on a presentation a good reason to change reality?”

“No.” Lila admitted, shoving the french toast in her mouth, uncut.

“So, what are some normal ways we can change that grade? Without wishing.” Tony pushed a napkin at her.

“Practice,” Lila said through a full mouth.

“Chewing and talking are to be done separately. Practice is one. Confidence is another. Your teacher is looking for you to be accurate but she’s also going to be grading you on how well you command the material. Wear your favorite dress. If you feel like you look nice, you hold yourself better. Everyone does.”

Lila swallowed hard. “Don’t mumble, don’t fidget, make eye contact.”

“All important but do they tell you how to avoid mumbling?”

“Practice,” Lila said like she was being scolded.

“No. There’s a difference between knowing what you’re going to say and memorizing your speech. You shouldn’t memorize.” He waved away her surprise. “They say you should because otherwise most kids won’t study but most kids don’t have me. The key isn’t memorizing. If you memorize and you get lost, you’ll have a hard time finding your place again. But if you know your material, you can say it in the order that makes sense at the time.”

Lila squinted thoughtfully. 

“We can work on that more with the next one.”

“You’ll be bored.”

“Why? Because I know this stuff? That’s not why your teacher wants to hear it. At your age, it’s about teaching you how to learn and how to manage projects. That is something that’s never boring.” He smiled. “You know all those times your dad has told you you’ll understand when you’re older? This is how you learn to understand. It’s not something that just happens.”

She lowered her fork, frowning into the middle distance.

“Learning to face things and overcome them is an important part of growing up. Or so I’ve been told.” Tony waited for her to meet his eyes. “You’re doing good, kid.” He stood abruptly, feeling like the last man who should be talking about growing up. “We can talk about more strategies after. It’s today, right? Yeah, we can talk about how it went. Class in fifty minutes. You know how to turn the console on. Maggie will be here soon.”

He told himself he was giving her space to get ready before her virtual class started.

**3.**

Bruce had been on the run for a long time. Some habits died hard. He’d been idly scrolling through an answer on a science forum when he saw a post from BlueZydrate. The blue sparked a memory and the writing style felt familiar. He was suddenly reminded of how easily SHIELD had found him repeatedly.

He’d met Fury in a bar only a short time after creating the Hulk. Nat had found him in India within only a few days of Clint being whammied by Loki. Mr. Blue had been taken into custody so it wasn’t likely to be him but it could be someone who had interrogated him. Bruce had never seen or heard most of the people he’d talked to on IRC and ICQ. Everyone but Blue could be a SHIELD sock for all he knew. 

That was a story. Bruce cudgeled his brain into coming up with alternatives. Maybe he’d been turned in by someone who’d been in Harlem and had every reason to want him contained. Maybe Ross was fucking with him. 

Closing his eyes, Bruce breathed in and pictured light filling his body. He exhaled slowly and pictured the dark gunk of his bad emotions exiting with the air. In with the good, out with the bad.

It was a science forum. They were talking about science. They probably had similar training so, of course it was natural that whoever this was would sound like one of Bruce’s science friends. In the movie, zydrate was blue. It might have nothing to do with him. It was more likely it had nothing to do with him. And there was a good way to make sure it didn’t matter whether that was true or not.

Bruce opened his eyes and clicked the X button on the browser window.

Early on in his search for control one of the sages Bruce had tried to follow the advice that finding his happy place would bring him calm. It didn’t work. It wasn’t that he’d never been happy. He had a lot of happy memories of his mom, his aunt, Betty, Rick, his work, etc. But he had a hard time separating those memories from his anger, fear, and sadness.

Finally, one of the sages Bruce had found had told him to forget about being happy. Where had he felt safe? When had he felt comfortable in his own skin?

Bruce slowly and calmly built his happy place in his mind. He was in the first apartment he’d shared with Betty. It had been the first time it had been his name on the lease, the first place of his own. He involved all of his senses: remembering the noise of traffic out the window, the heat of August after term was out and he had nowhere to be, the smell of the previous tenant’s cigarettes was unpleasant but the place was his with its tiny TV and its Goodwill couch.

He focused on the physical sensations he associated with being safe, calling them into the present. Bruce’s shoulders relaxed and his hands unclenched. His heart rate slowed and his breathing evened out. Tricking the body into thinking it was calm made the mind calm and it stopped being a trick.

He could trust Betty. He could trust Tony. There were people he could rely on. Trust was real, he was safe.

He opened his eyes and was heading toward his lab. He had very little warning before Lila stormed past him. He waited for a three count before following her into the common area. Cassie, Maggie, and Paxton weren’t going to be home for another three hours. Vision was off doing something to better understand humanity. Rhodey and Tony were out flying. 

Bruce was the only other resident at home.

He sat on one of the couches with a copy of an article he was trying to peer review. He kept getting derailed every time he reached the asshole’s methodology. He gave up and started writing comments in the margins that were too mean to publish but Tony would enjoy.

Eventually, Lila growled, “Fine, I’ll talk about it.”

Realizing that Lila had sighed a few times, Bruce nodded. “I’m here.”

“I want to wish Cooper dead. But I don’t want to kill him.” Lila said, crossing her arms.

Bruce chewed on that thought before answering. “Then it sounds like you don’t wish him dead.”

“Well, no, but I’m so jealous. He’s graduating. He doesn’t need to keep going to school. He can move out and have a life and mom and dad are so proud they could burst and-”

“Lila, you aren’t your thoughts,” he broke in.

“-they’re just- What?” Lila stared at him in surprise.

“We react, we think things, but those things aren’t us. You look at him getting attention from your parents and you’re jealous. That’s something you experience, it’s not something you are.” Bruce spread his hands. “I’m Bruce Banner who is angry. I’m not a sack of angry walking around under the name Bruce Banner.”

“I love them and I want to hurt them. What kind of person am I?” Her tone tore at Bruce’s heart.

“Normal.” Bruce said bluntly. “Remember what I taught you about telling yourself a story, this is the other part. There’s a little voice in your head that worries and criticizes. It’s not you. Your emotions aren’t you. Your thoughts aren’t you.”

“Then what is?”

“Take a deep breath.” Bruce demonstrated and waited out Lila’s glower. “Count it out.” They practiced three breaths together and then Bruce added, “now, when you exhale through your nose, focus on the feeling of the air right by your nostrils. That spot where the air goes from being inside to outside. Feel how it warms you just a little right there.”

Watching her breathe, a wave of pride swept through Bruce. She was relaxed and calm, her forehead smoothing out as he watched.

“That’s who you are. Not the things you’ve done, not the things that have happened to you. When you stop thinking, that’s you. Everything else is the world.” He smiled crookedly. “We spend so much of our time swimming in brain chemicals from different stressors and emotions that we think the reactions they cause are normal and therefore us. But whether you call it lizard brain or id, our desires and reactions are taught to us, who we decide to be comes from this place of strength. I trust you not to hurt your family because you don’t want to, you just think about wanting to. Maybe you think you should want to because it would prove something to them or you. It doesn’t really matter.”

Bruce paused. “Focus on the way your upper lip has that spot is a little bit cooler when you’re inhaling.”

A few breaths later, Lila opened her eyes. “You’re not going to tell me it’s bad to be jealous of Cooper?”

“Emotions aren’t good or bad. If you lashed out at Cooper out of jealousy, that would be bad. But being jealous of him for getting to start the next part of his life just means it’s something you want. Wanting your parents attention is normal. It’s a big deal and you’ll never be first to do it.” Bruce raised his eyebrows, inviting comment. “What part of that are you supposed to be bad for feeling?”

“I’m supposed to be happy for him,” Lila said uncomfortably.

“Are you?”

“I guess.”

“When you imagine your big brother up on stage with his diploma in his hand, what do you feel?”

“I want it to be me.”

“Do you think about the work he put into getting his grades and helping with the farm and Nate?” Bruce worked another thought around before speaking. “Do you know what I see when Tony is handling a press conference? All the work he put into it. Work I don’t have to do because he did it.”

“But I wanted to help mom with Nate and the farm!” Lila burst out.

“Yes, you do. All you’d need for that is to wish away your power.” Bruce gave her an unimpressed look. “You want this, something your brother doesn’t have. Maybe that’s not why you’re keeping it but you are choosing this. You are choosing to keep being our apprentice. And maybe some of these feelings are doubt?”

“What if they don’t like me anymore because I want this?” Lila asked hoarsely.

Bruce was really not someone who was going to tell a child that their parents would always love them. Besides, loving and liking were two different things. “Would that stop you?”

“I don’t know.” Lila looked down at her hands. “No.”

“Then, ‘what if’?’”

Lila glowered. 

“I’m serious. They don’t have to like you and you don’t have to like them. What changes?” Bruce kept his voice low and gentle.

“I don’t go home after I’m done with my apprenticeship,” Lila said finally.

“Yeah, that would suck.” Bruce said simply.

Lila paused and giggled. 

Bruce shrugged with a faint smile. “What? It would.”

“It’s just-”

“I’m not here to pretend everything is okay and none of this is a big deal, Apprentice. Growing up is a big, painful deal. But I think you can deal with it.” He shifted his weight uneasily. “And if it’s not- No matter how good we get at this, the fears and doubts don’t go away. We just learn how to recognize them and when to listen to them.”

Lila looked thoughtful, then did a few breaths.

“One of the wise men I visited told me that I’d have an easier time with control if I stopped viewing my self as a cage. I’m going to be spending an awful lot of time with myself, fighting to get away from myself would just make me tired on top of angry. Being jealous of Cooper doesn’t make you less my apprentice or convince me not to care about you.” Bruce went back to his article after he saw her smile.

**4.**

Being afraid of being Howard wasn’t something that ever really left Tony. But it was his own fear to deal with, not Lila’s. Forcing her to comfort him when he was afraid he was going to have to be loud and aggressive with a child who was no match for him would only make things worse. So he spent the drive home forcing himself to relax.

His mind kept circling back to his fear and anger at Lila. Years of practice made it easier to remind himself that thoughts came and went. He couldn’t control that he very much wanted to shake an answer out of Lila but he didn’t have to hold onto the thought. Having the thought didn’t mean anything. He could just change the channel right back to his most recent armor. He remodeled it into three different configurations on the drive, pushing away the interruptions and the temptation to stew.

Focusing on something he enjoyed to avoid blowing up over something unpleasant wasn’t cheating.

Tony found Lila exactly where he expected, looking over magazines with Cassie. The older girl still had her ice pack for her torn hip flexor next to a stack of Teen Vogue, Popular Science, and National Geographic issues. “Lila, a word.”

Lila stood up, shoulders set with resistance and anger, her mouth a tight line. “I’m coming.”

Tony waited until they were in her room to start. “I got a call from your teacher. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“They called me a hick! They said gross things about you! They talked shit about me and Cassie!”

“You are grounded! FRIDAY! Lila Barton can only access the educational routines on the tower systems. And you are very lucky that’s all I’m doing, young lady.” Tony took off his sunglasses, glaring. “You could have seriously hurt those boys.”

“They deserved it!”

“They deserved to be disciplined by the school and lectured by their parents and teachers. ‘I wish you’d shut up,’ is not the way to handle this.” 

Balling her hands into fists, Lila glared up at him. 

“You could have killed them, Lila.” Tony said more quietly.

She looked away and started to cry.

Tony stood helplessly for a moment and then pulled her into a hug. She was still tense with anger so he didn’t try to do more, just sighed and waited. A dozen projects flashed through his mind as he waited. He calculated and made extremis notes to FRIDAY to keep his mouth from running.

“You didn’t hear what they said about you,” she said finally.

“I don’t need to. You know why? They don’t know me. Anything they have to say is about them, not me.” Tony held her out, hands on her shoulders. “Who are these boys to you? Does their opinion matter or is it just that they were insulting us?”

“Insulting.”

“Why does it matter? People say gross things everyday. It doesn’t hurt me, I never even hear most of it.”

“Because it…” She pulled away from Tony and he let her.

“You graduate, you probably never see these boys again. What does it matter that they said disgusting things to you? I know your feelings are hurt. But beyond that why give them power over you?” 

“Because it’s not right.” Lila stamped a foot, hiccuping.

“I’m not saying you should do nothing.” Tony pulled his hands back. “Tell teachers. Tell me. Shout at them to knock it off. Leave the room and refuse to be in the same place until the adults have done something. Reach out to other people, don’t just lash out.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tony took a deep breath. “I know Bruce has been working with you on emotional control and all that- stuff.”

Lila nodded warily.

“Here’s a thing about people: nothing they say is ever really about you. It’s about how they feel, the reaction they want to provoke, their self-image, and a dozen other things you’ll never know about. Sometimes they mean to hurt, sometimes they mean to help. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes it’s so far from being about you that they don’t even think how it will impact you. But no matter what, their behavior is about whatever is going on with them. Their experiences, their worries, their fears.”

“The principal asked me if I did something to make them be mean to me.”

“He’s an idiot.” Tony said without thinking. “Even if you said or did something that provoked them, how they deal with that is on them. Just like your behavior is on you, no matter what they did.”

She clenched her jaw and looked at the floor.

“Did you do something?”

“No! Cassie and I were talking and the lead doofus tried to ask for my number and I blew him off.”

“Do you have classes with these boys?”

“No. They’re older. Juniors, I think.”

“Okay,” Tony said because that was not okay at all. “Then you really don’t need to care what he thinks, only what he does or plans to do.” He caught her suspicious glare and shrugged. “If he reacts that badly to being turned down, other people will know what he is. There’s no reason to try to get the good opinion of someone like that, kiddo. At the same time, we don’t want you being jumped. If he wants to think you’re a bitch, let him. But if he tries to intimidate you, let us or the teachers know. It’s not on you to prove anything to him or your teachers.”

“But-” Lila stopped.

“But it sucks that he says nasty shit? Yeah, it does.”

“How do you stand it?”

“I know who I am. I know what I’m capable of. There’s only so many hours in the day. How much time do I really have to devote to the ignorant?” Tony quirked an eyebrow. “I could spend hours and hours looking for every time someone had said something awful about me and correcting them. Does that sound fun or useful?”

“No,” Lila admitted.

“Listen, I am sure there are people across the internet right this minute making fun of the Avengers. There are all kinds of television programs across the globe where they’re saying we’re ugly and stupid. But really, what does it matter? There are people who are never going to let my past go, but what does it matter? Who are they to me that they get to have my time and energy? I’m happier working on my projects and hanging out with you than I would be spending my time on all those assholes. They don’t matter to me, you do. The Board of Directors has never needed to like me, they just need to accept my role in the company. Your teachers don’t need to like you, they need to teach you.

“And kiddo, I am far more powerful than some of these guys will ever be. I need to pick on people my own size. So do you.”

Lila gave Tony a mulish look that reminded him of Bruce.

“They deserve to be in deep shit with their parents and the school. They don’t deserve to be wished at. You could seriously hurt them.”

“Bruce says I’m telling myself a story about them. I don’t know what they were thinking or wanted to have happen.”

“You are. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t protect yourself. Because you don’t know if he just wanted to see you flinch or wanted something worse. You know how he treated you. You get to set boundaries on how people act toward you. You just don’t get to control what other people say or do.” Tony twitched a shrug. “Mostly that means distancing yourself from people who do this crap. He’s not in your classes, he doesn’t live here, and you’ll probably never see him after he graduates.

“Your teachers know he’s a problem and I will make sure they do something. He will face consequences for what he did. And your consequences for risking his and his friends’ lives are that you are grounded. He’s a boy, he might grow up. He might not. It’s not your job to force them to be better people. It’s your job to stand up for yourself.”

“I know, I know.” Lila hugged herself. “It really doesn’t bother you that people say stuff like that about you?”

“I don’t like it. But-” Tony shrugged more expansively. “I would rather live in a world where people are free to express their filth. Ultimately, how does it hurt me?” He spread his arms out to demonstrate his wholeness. “I knew there would be commentary on my business when I designed weapons. I knew there would be media blowback when I got SI out of the weapons industry. A lot of the things I do make people feel strongly. People express those feelings a lot of different ways. It doesn’t mean I was wrong to do it. It doesn’t make them right or wrong. It’s just a thing people do. Some people insult me. Some people juggle geese.

“If you do anything really worth doing, someone will be shitty about it.”

**5.**

Bruce, Tony, and Rhodey were waiting for Lila when she reached the kitchen. If she’d been sneaking back into the tower she would have felt guilty. As it was, she felt hungry and confused.

“We’re worried,” Tony began.

“We know you got your grades three days ago,” Bruce said quietly. “And you’ve seemed really down since then.”

“And it’s 12:54,” Rhodey said from his corner by the fridge. “You should be in bed.”

Lila’s first instinct was to run back to her room and hide but she breathed deeply and squared her shoulders. “I didn’t do very well. 3.1 GPA for the term.”

“That’s not that bad,” Rhodey said quickly.

Frustration tore at Lila’s throat. They were all engineers with more degrees between them than birthdays she’d celebrated. “But I should have done better. I’m only there because you guys helped me with studying and SATs and scholarships. Dad didn’t graduate high school. What am I doing there?”

“You’re getting the grades you earn,” Tony said, frowning.

“Lila,” Rhodey broke in. “I want you to write me two lists. First one: things people have told you, you’re good at.” He nudged Tony who left and came back with a spiral notebook.

She stared at the blank page for a few minutes as Tony started making sandwiches and Bruce went back to his own reading and Rhodey bickered with Tony about what type of mustard went best with roast beef.

“I told you that you can throw a really good punch,” Bruce reminded her.

She wrote that down and then remembered that Rhodey has praised her flying. One of her professors had told her she had an excellent grasp on scansion. Her mom had told her she had a good sense of style. Cassie had told her that her handmade jewelry was beautiful. She’d written a killer essay for her Freshman level composition class.

A few minutes later she looked up from her list to find rocket scientists and sandwiches waiting.

“Now write a list of things you’re bad at,” Rhodey told her.

Lila cringed as she admitted she struggled with history. The names and dates were hard to hold onto. She had a hard time with hurdle jumping. Getting down to the laundry room to actually clean her sheets was so much harder than she’d thought it would be. She had a bad temper. She was horrible at football.

When she paused, Rhodey tapped her wrist. “The second list doesn’t cancel the first list. And it doesn’t need to.”

“And did you expect to ace everything?” Tony pointed at an item. “You’re not good at history, you shouldn’t expect to ace it. Passing a class you’re bad at is so far from failure.”

She frowned at the lists uncomfortably.

“I know it’s tough but when someone gives you a compliment like those,” Rhodey pointed at the first list, “just say thank you. Your successes are yours, not ours.”

“Our success is in keeping you alive long enough to get to college. Everything else is you,” Tony said with a smile that warmed Lila.

“We love you and we want you to succeed,” Bruce added. “If you let us help, we’d like to.”

“Keep the lists and when you fail or succeed at something, add it to the list. It’s really important to learn what to expect from your performance.” Rhodey tore a piece of crust off his sandwich.

“So I can improve,” Lila said dutifully.

“So you know what to expect,” Rhodey corrected. “Knowing the limits of your competency is a good skill to have on its own. It doesn’t mean you can’t work on them and it doesn’t mean you have to. It’s okay to… be bad at football.” He read from her list.

“You’ll get a lot more mileage out of improving the things you’re good at than shoring up your weaknesses. Be a star, not a circle.” Tony smirked.

“But there are some things you need for everything else.” Lila objected.

“You can spend as much time shoring up your weaknesses as you need to,” Bruce said quietly. “But all three of us are here because we specialized in something we excel at. They aren’t the only skills we have. But if I can have someone else do my taxes, then I only need to understand my tax situation, not the special rules that an accountant would need. It gives me more time to do the things I enjoy and I’m good at.”

“There are lots of things we don’t do because it’s more efficient for someone else to do them. And it’s okay for you to be bad at them now and good at them later. Struggling is okay. Being wrong is okay.” Rhodey gave her an encouraging smile.

“You aren’t your mom, dad, or Cooper,” Tony told her. “You’re your own person.”

“Honesty is important. Be honest with yourself about what your skills are and what you can handle. That includes time with your family,” Bruce said wryly.

“Oh, you guys heard that.” Lila sighed.

“If you can only take ninety minutes with your dad, don’t go for one hundred.” Bruce said gently. “You love him, he loves you, he means well. That’s not what’s really important. What’s really important is the screaming fit you have when you reach your limit and you tell him he’s a bad father who abandoned you. You’re an adult now. You set your limits.”

“But he’s my dad,” Lila said in a small voice.

“Yep, he is,” said the man who still woke from nightmares where his father’s hand was wrapped around his throat and squeezing. “You know how I have trouble with clothes when I’m really tired? I set an amount of time and I program an alert. Alert goes off, I go back to my room. That’s me taking care of me because I care about the people around me. Loving your dad doesn’t mean sticking around until you blow and it doesn’t mean you need to gut it out and will yourself not to blow.”

“He doesn’t mean to upset me he just doesn’t listen.”

“Yeah. He doesn’t listen to you so you need to listen to you,” said the man who still woke from nightmares where his father told him all the ways he’d failed his parents and everyone at the company. “You can’t control his behavior, only yours. Set up a way to walk away when you need breathing space.”

“You can do this,” Rhodey told her.

_One)_

After he was finished cleaning his gear, Bucky rested his head against the bulkhead of the quinjet and closed his eyes. He had time before they made land again and so he relaxed. There were no problems he could solve or things he could do between now and then, so he began to drift toward sleep.

He jerked back to wakefulness as Lila sat beside him. Her armor was packed away, her under armor glowing faintly. “I heard what they called you,” she said quietly enough that only he could hear her.

Bucky shrugged, not surprised that she understood Russian. “I pissed off a lot of people. They have good reason.”

“I just thought that-”

“That maybe I’d feel so guilty I’d let them walk all over me?” Bucky snorted. “No. It’s been a long time since that’s been true. But thank you.”

“If you’re sure…” Lila’s face filled with concern for him rather than just indignation over people behaving badly.

“The thing that made it click for me was when I got asked a question. He asked, ‘Even if you deserve horrible things for what you’ve done, do they deserve to be allowed to do them to you?’” Bucky clenched and unclenched his metal hand. “‘No one has the right to treat other people badly.’”

“So it’s more of a thing where you let them say what they say because you know who you are?”

“Sort of. People have a right to be mad at me. Their anger doesn’t mean I have to give them my time or attention. I have my own life to live. I choose not to spend time with people who treat me like shit even if the emotions behind it are completely justified.” Bucky looked his teammate in the eye. “I like who I am. People who don’t like me, who don’t understand what I like about myself, are the worst sources of advice on what to change.”

“Oh,” Lila said, eyes wide.

Bucky forced a smile. “Oh, poor Bucky. He had all of this forced on him? Was that what you were thinking? Nah. I signed up to fight Germany. A lot of this, I chose. Maybe not the specifics and maybe not every step of the way, but I decided to fight. I decided to be an Avenger. I like this, I’m good at it. I’ll never win everyone over and that’s okay. It’s not a popularity contest.”

“You’re not responsible for them, you’re responsible for you.”

Bucky felt his smile turn less fake. “Exactly.”

**Author's Note:**

> Work title credit:
> 
> Water Up To My Knees - [Of Monsters and Men: Yellow Light](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBlKPLeLU_s)  
> ~~~  
> Posted 12 Jan 19
> 
> My place of work has a HUGE emphasis on mindfulness and resilience training. Most of the things I've learned I wish I had in middle and high school.


End file.
